"You will excuse me, Mellifont," he said grandly, the brandy and soda having, as was the wont of any such liquor taken by our poor poet, gone straight upward to his head—"you will excuse me, I am sure, if I say this is not exactly a subject for jocularity; or even, permit me to add, for general conversation, although among friends. My distinguished friend, Mr. Heron, will, I am sure, exactly appreciate what I say. Things may not be so completely settled as to make it proper that they should be spoken of as if—as if in short they were settled; you will excuse me, Mellifont, my dear fellow—you will excuse me."
Victor Heron thought it time for him to go, and rose accordingly, and Mr. Blanchet insisted on accompanying him down the stairs and to the door of the house.
"I thought it right, you know," the over-dignified poet said, "to put a stop to that sort of thing. Men have no right to make such inferences. I should have no right myself to assume that things were settled in that sort of way. It is not just to others—to another at least. You appreciate my motives I am sure, Heron, my dear friend?"
"I don't know that I even quite understand what your friend was talking about," said Heron coldly. "But if it was about any lady, I should think such conjecturing highly improper and impertinent; and I should be rather inclined to put a stop to it even more quickly."
"Quite my idea—I am glad you entirely concur with me, and approve of the course I have taken. But of course you would do so. I knew I could count on your approval. By the way, you know Mellifont?"
"The man you talked to just now?"
"Yes, Mellifont—a very good fellow, though a little too fond of talking—I have had to reprove him more than once, I can tell you. But a very good fellow for all that, and one of the only true artists now alive. He is a composer—you must hear him play some bits from his opera. He is at work on an opera, you know—or perhaps you have not heard?"
"I have not heard—no. I am rather out of the way of such things, I fear," said Victor, beginning to feel, in spite of himself, a certain awe of a man who could compose an opera, and thinking that, after all, a certain allowance must be made for the genius of one who could do such things.
"Oh, you must hear some of it soon! We feel satisfied that it will sound the death knell of all the existing schools of music. They are all wrong, sir, from the first to the last, from Mozart to Wagner—all wrong except Mellifont."
Victor was for the moment really staggered by the genius of this great man.